Note for the record
WCSSG meeting held at Cleator Moor Civic and Masonic Centre
Tuesday 7 November 2016
Present:
Felicity Wilson - Copeland Borough Council
Lynne Blackburn - Civil Nuclear Constabulary
Paul Turner - Cumbria County Council
Lindsay Gray - Churches Forum
Jane Donaldson - St Bees Parish Council
Peter Manning - Beckermet Parish Council
Bob Jones - Ponsonby Parish Council
Peter Tyson - Trades Union Council
Kevin Bethwaite - Cumbia Fire and Rescue
Mark Gabbott - ONR
Paul Foster - Sellafield Ltd
Shirley Fawcett - Sellafield Ltd
Phil Hallington - Sellafield Ltd
Jamie Reed - Sellafield Ltd
Rosina Robinson - Secretary
David Moore - Chairman – Seascale Parish Council Rep
Mike Starkie - Copeland Borough Council
Andrew Vanderlem NDA
Frank Morgan - Cumbria County Council
Alan Smith - Allerdale Borough Council
Keith Hitchen - Drigg and Carleton Parish Council
Dennis Thompson - LLWR
Paul McKenna - Isle of Man Government
Steve Smith - Copeland Borough Council
Ishizaki San and party - TEPCO
Note:
Copies of all the presentations and reports referred to in this document are available to view on the West Cumbria Sites Stakeholder Group website at www.wcssg.co.uk
Agenda item 1:
The Chairman welcomed members and observers to the meeting. The group were privileged to welcome Ishizaki-san and his delegation from TEPCO, Japan who were visiting to share best practice of liaising and engaging with the local community.
Agenda item 2: update on Sellafield Ltd Chemical situation and Sellafield Ltd inspections following the Grenfell Tower disaster
Phil Hallington updated members on recent activity associated with chemicals and the work Sellafield was doing to examine cladding systems at Sellafield following the dreadful Grenfell tower events in London.
He explained that Sellafield has been undertaking a review of chemicals on the site which started in early October. Progress had been very good across the site until the middle of October, when some chemicals were identified that had the possibility (because of degradation over time and in conjunction with being exposed to air) to have some reactive properties. Advice was sought which resulted in the explosives ordinance disposal team from Catterick coming to the site on the 20th / 21st October. The EOD team safely conducted some explosive demolition of the chemicals.
Following further searches across the site The EOD team was invited back for a subsequent period of time on the 25th October, departing the site on 1st November.
During that period of time additional organic chemicals were identified which were also disposed of explosively. The chemicals in questions are the kinds of chemicals that are in wide industrial use. Sellafield Ltd has convened a board of inquiry to understand more fully the circumstances surrounding the finds and endeavoured to address the committee at a later date with the results of the inquiry.
Mr Hallington continued that the EOD team was incredibly professional and dealt with the chemicals very safely. The team receives hundreds of callouts a year across the country where chemicals have essentially gone past their sell by date and are visiting schools, university laboratories, and industrial premises where degradation occurs within these solvents.
He reassured members, that at no time was any radioactivity involved and the matter had been dealt with very professionally.
There were no questions:
Mr Hallington also briefed members on the fire cladding testing being undertaken at Sellafield. With interaction with the nuclear safety regulation, Office for Nuclear Regulation, Sellafield used a risk prioritised approach to the buildings on the site. There are over 1,000 buildings, 115 of those have been studied in detail on the basis of personal and nuclear safety risk. There are a series of types of cladding, nothing which looks like the cladding at Grenfell tower. All site cladding checked has two metal sides to it, steel or aluminium or steel and steel. Inside it has insulation material which is fully bonded; it doesn’t have the air gap that existed in the Grenfell Tower cladding. Out of the priority buildings that have been studied very carefully, Sellafield is satisfied there are no actions needed at this point. Fire inspections are continuing across the remainder of the site as part of Sellafield’s normal approach.
There were no questions.
Agenda Item 3 – NDA social impacts
Report was given by Andrew Vanderlem – copy on the WCSSG website
Q: Bob Jones: commented that it was a crucial time for the community. Sellafield is changing fast and will continue to change. In doing so, it will bring threats to the community, but will also bring opportunities to the community. He felt it was important to capitalise on those opportunities now as taking them in five years’ time will not be effective.
He felt the challenge was to work out how to do that together. He suggested it was further commented on, following Jamie’s presentation, as it is about how the NDA, Sellafield Ltd, the local politicians and the local community can work together in the future in partnership in a way that has never been done in the past in this area.
Agenda item 4 – Sellafield Ltd, transformation, social impacts and skills
Report was given by Jamie Reed – copy available on the WCSSG website
A video of Jamie presenting his report is also available on the website. https://wcssg.co.uk/2017/11/the-future-is-in-our-hands/
Chairman: Felt that everyone agreed with the vision that Jamie described, his difficulty was in understanding how the supply chain would be energised. He commented that the spending will reduce on the site, therefore the government spends will reduce. He didn’t understand how you generate and energise the supply chain on less spend? He understood the supply chain currently work off the money provided by Sellafield Limited, and are used to being paid by SL to carry out work, this would be turned almost on its head and he wondered how that would be achieved?
Jamie Reed: completely understood the difficulty that many people have in seeing how the future is going to change and what it will look like. He explained that SL planned to achieve it by working with the supply chain to help it access other market places and other contracting entities away from SL. He gave a very good example of a local company in the supply chain which began with 80% work won out of Sellafield, and was now down to around 12% Sellafield work. This was achieved by doing most of its work in the North Sea in oil and gas decommissioning and serving other nuclear facilities around the UK. Sellafield Ltd would look to emulate that kind of success by helping its supply chain look towards other market places. However they will only succeed with SLs assistance and with the right kind of skills in the area. The investments that SL is making in secondary, further and higher education are designed to do exactly that, but it’s not a quick process.
Paul Foster: commented that the amount of money Sellafield receives is dependent upon the value that the government places on what it is doing. For instance this year the NDA has asked SL to do more work because of the value that presents and that work creates jobs. Within that, the more value SL creates, the more efficient and effective it is, therefore more investable, creating more opportunities. Some of the 2000 roles that Jamie had mentioned are already accounted for with accelerations and new work. The site needs to be ready if it does reduce, but Mr Foster asked people not to pre-suppose that it will. Also, currently SL buy a lot of items that are one offs and from outside of the country, so part of the transformation programme is centering more of the £1.2 billion that it buys more locally.
David Moore: welcomed a bigger spend within the community.
Bob Jones: commented that the reduced funding in the short term will be relatively small compared to the spend that is being made annually and it is important to take whatever opportunities are available to take best advantage of that. He continued that significant reductions are coming, and are not going to go away. The community needs to position itself to take best advantage of what is available now to future proof the communities.
He commented that diversifying will be a massive challenge because this area is restricted in some ways, the infrastructure is not good, the wage bill, ie, Sellafield salaries doesn’t make it attractive necessarily for other people/businesses to come to the area. He continued that the area has to get around those things and he felt the only way to do that is by truly working together as a community between Sellafield Ltd, NDA, local politicians and local communities. He felt that a way had never been found in the past to truly do that and reach that common vision. He asked, how can an organisation be put together to make that working relationship happen?
Jamie Reed: Responded that there has never been a shortage of people wanting to come together to try and address the issues and get involved in the problems. The problem in his experience has always been the actual delivery capability of those partnerships. He continued that there is not going to be any kind of Marshall plan for the community and he felt that one isn’t needed. The money coming into the community compared with a similar sized community anywhere else in the UK, is significantly higher, the issue is how the money is spent, which cannot include special pleading, it has got to be based upon the community being good enough, fit enough and able enough for the money to be spent here and for it to stick here. He commented that Sellafield Ltd is genuinely 100% open to any suggestions of partnership working anyone wanted to make, however in the past it’s been the ability to deliver and to maximise the spend, not the lack of partnership intent.
Paul Foster: added that Sellafield Ltd wants to support Cumbria’s vision, not Cumbria support Sellafield Ltd’s vision, and that was going to be the challenge. He commented that individual groups are working on topics but it was important to have an overarching vision. Decisions could be made to fund something that is already being funded elsewhere but it isn’t known about. He agreed that a group of some sort was needed.
He commented that Mike Starkie has already begun work to discuss elements to try and see the full picture, ie: health, education, economy, infrastructure, and what is most important for the future of the region. It was important that the vision for the region is understood and practical, for example the vision for the region may be to build another Thorp, however the market isn’t there for it and the world doesn’t want it, so it is unlikely to happen.
He felt that the successful future of West Cumbria would depend on whether everyone involved could agree on the high level principals that everyone wants to see and suspend fighting over the detail. He felt approaching it topic by topic would not create a sustainable long term future economy. He wanted to make it clear that Sellafield Ltd wanted to support the community’s vision and not the other way around and if a vehicle can be found to address this, he would be happy to talk it through.
He gave examples of how fighting over the detail can impact on progress, he referred to six jobs being relocated in a PPE provider to Carlisle made front page news, yet 2000 roles surplus at Sellafield hasn’t been mentioned anywhere. The incongruity of issuing letters to 500 surplus Thorp personnel one weekend re-deploying them to other jobs retrained at SLs expense and at the same time a strike for more money. He explained that 1% on the wage bill is 100 jobs in the local supply chain delivering asset care work to make the site safer, that is the margin of choices that the company is at, and it would be wrong to do is tackle one issue around – `I want a pay award but I still want these other things, I want this but I don’t want to provide that’ as it doesn’t address the long term vision.
Peter Manning: Referred to Jamie’s presentation, particularly the list of investments over the last few years, Dalton Institute, Workington Port etc. He asked if it had gotten to the point where the success of the outlay can be quantified or was it still work in progress?
Jamie Reed: replied that for some of the investments it is still work in progress. The education investments are adding real value every single academic year. He commented on the Sellafield apprentices and graduates, not many graduates are coming from the locality, but the hardware in place is up there with the very best and the outcomes in those regards are improving year on year.
The Dalton Nuclear Institute in terms of helping to establish or remind people that we are the UK centre of nuclear excellence is massively valuable in that endeavour.
In terms of education investments, they are adding value, year on year. For instance the performance of Westlakes academy from when it started to where it is now is from 21% A to C GCSE grades to 75%. He commented that those kinds of outcomes are remarkable. He continued that Sellafield cannot take all of the credit for that, it is down to the school and the staff and the governors. However SL is closely involved in all of those kinds of developments, and in that particular instance it would not have happened but for the SL investments.
Alan Smith: commented that there was nothing in the presentation about framework contracts. He has been in talks with Paul Foster about framework contracts and the difficulty local firms have in terms of competing. He suggested that if it was Sellafield’s intention to build a long term partnership those firms have to be included. He felt it needed to be explored.